While there can be no two views regarding the government’s bungling of the energy problem, Islamabad must also accept blame for failing to foresee financial and social losses from the present rioting. Surely they did not expect to keep kicking the can down the road all the way to election time. That would amount to insulting the same public’s intelligence that brought them to office. On the other hand, surely they didn’t expect to keep promising and not delivering all through their term in office. That, too, would insult our intelligence. What, then, is the problem?Unfortunately, the answer is lost in as circular a web as the debt that is central to the issue. But there is broad consensus that it boils down to a question of simple political will. Now that’s been a touchy topic for this administration right through the last half decade.
It didn’t come down hard on PSEs for fear of alienating political cadres, for example. The result is a hemorrhaging economy that might alone suffice to lose them the election. Nobody in Islamabad (or Karachi for that matter) put his foot down to curb the government’s addiction to debt. Little surprise then that the window of opportunity for private sector expansion has gone begging. Simply put, time’s come when living to fight another day amounts to shooting yourself in the foot.
The highest, and most influential, offices of the government must immediately do whatever is necessary to get a handle on the energy mess. Mob psyche is a volatile phenomenon no matter how subtle the stimulant. With every alternate hour of load shedding – and often much more so – the rioting will now turn worse, which means more millions in losses for a government already choked by deficits and debt. Yet again its incompetence has cost the people dear.
